Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.
brought civil
rights to the
fore of
American
consciousness.

Distinctions
of "race" discredited

The Nazi
horrors discredited eugenics as a social program.
Studies in social and biological science repudiated its
stigmatizing theories of human difference, showing that
what it took to be distinctions of race were actually
those of ethnicity. In the United States, the social policies
that reduced discrimination and expanded opportunity worked
with the passage of time to produce their salubrious effects
among the newer immigrants and their descendants, including
socioeconomic improvement and, eventually, par performance
on IQ tests. Between the 1930s and the 1980s, whites'
scores on such tests rose some 14 points. Blacks'
scores rose, too, though not as much. Still, along with
the change in whites' scores, the increase indicates that
test results are not rigidly fixed by genes, but are
also sensitive to changes in education, opportunity, and
scholastic ambition.

Blacks have resided on the American continent for the
better part of four centuries; nevertheless, it is mainly
since World War II -- but even more so since the 1960s
-- that they have passed on their migration to freedom
from a United States that was legally segregated and
in countless ways racially oppressive to the contemporary
nation, where, although racism continues its poisonous
work, new standards of law and tolerance better protect
dignity and beckon ambition. In a sense, blacks as
a community have only just embarked on the journey that
many white immigrant groups took several generations
to complete. It is not unreasonable to conceive
that, as it was for those white minorities, so it will
be -- given enough time and good will -- for nonwhite
minorities, including the flood of recent newcomers
to the United States.

The roots of human behaviors and capacities are
complicated. Attempts to probe them for the role
of genes may try to allow for contemporary environmental
differences, but they tend to be blind to the cultural
and psychological impact of past experience. They rely
on measures that fail to capture attitudes, aspirations,
expectations, and, above all, social hope. In short,
they can be blind to the legacy of history.